We heard about this when it happened, worst part is that a dot is about to tick... But hey you got it dead now, grats Carl!

Video for this kill

I'm not going to do it for you as it's a lot of math and work, but here's how you calculate how accurate that is: 1. Calculate damage types ratio's, accuracy rates, and damage values based on A LOT parsed data. 2. Calculate approximate pre mitigation DTPS for all damage types. 3. Calculate the max hit and damage distribution for both full mitigation and max hp builds for the given encounter. 4. Calculate probability of double / triple strike at max potential damage for both a mitigation and a endurance build, this is how much more / less spiky the build will be in regards to damage intake. 5. Calculate mitigation values for both optimal mitigation and max hp builds. 6. Calculate time till death for both an optimal mitigation and max hp build for above data. Finally compare the change in spike damage potential and probability to change in survival time, spikes will become more frequent as you reduce shield and defense chance. TTK will be increased when you add hp but decreased as you reduce absorb. Also take in consideration the ratio of the max hit to the ratio of max hp. Look at all these values and decide if increasing how spiky by X amount and your damage intake by Y is worth gaining a buffer of T seconds and reducing the max hit by Z percent of total health? Also keep in mind that trading mitigation for HP may actually decrease your buffer time, but it will always reduce the percent lost from a max hit (only armor really effects this). You can use my spreadsheet to help you but it requires information that can only be obtained from A LOT of parses. I did run the numbers back when TFB NiM first came out and max endurance netted something like an extra 1.5 seconds of survival time in the Dread Guards encounter out of a total of something like 14 seconds of time I could stay up without healing. Meanwhile my spikiness increased drastically (like over twofold) and I took about 15%ish more overall damage, so mitigation clearly won. Mind you this is data from a long time ago, specific to gear I had access to at the time, and I'm pulling it out of memory so I would avoid quoting it as gospel. Alternatively, you can just ask healers which one they are more comfortable healing. Our healers say that our full mitigation builds are way easier by far and much less spiky than the occasional endurance stackers we have had "guest tank" with us. However, if you are not progressing because your tanks are dying to spike damage, while other raid teams are clearing the content you are probably doing it wrong. If you are progressing, then I guess it works and the question is academic.

Threat is really never an issue for me, and our DPS is some of the best in the game (like literally). Nobody holds back on openings and the only time I really lose threat is when I screw up pretty badly. Dashrode we actually use both tanks to position, so threat is never an issue. Example Dashrode I've never had threat problems during Thrasher NiM... I open on Thrasher as a Vanguard with my standard opening, another tank taunts off me and we both get knocked up to the platform. Thrasher Example Video For Titan 6 our sniper, Claimed, is roll spec and gets about 8k dps during the initial burst, I still don't lose threat and don't need taunt boosting from the other tank. Titain 6 Example Video The only real encounter that I worry about threat is Hateful Entity, and that's concern about commando healer threat. DPS is severely reduced until the fight progresses to a certain point, so my threat gen is kinda junky at the beginning and I spend a lot of the initial portion of the fight LOS of the boss. It's still pretty manageable and just takes getting in taunts at the appropriate spots. Hateful Video with a Healer Threat Pull Threat is not really an issue in the game at this point, unless there is a pretty large gear disparity between the DPS and the Tank. Half the time we forget to guard our dps and don't really notice a difference... If you aren't holding threat with roughly equal gear, you may want to work on your opening a bit.

That's like, really high... Like the highest I've seen. What fight do you have the boss damage types tuned for and what are your stats? I'm curious.

Keep in mind you can only use one clicky, also you need to turn the duration down to 20 if using anything but underworld. Strangely the underworld clicks normally outperform their higher tier counterparts because of their longer duration. (And of course, you can only use one.) I prefer to have one clicky simply because on demand usage is so important, as it's not constant dmg intake that kills you, it's spike damage, which click relics can be used to help with. Also the fact that they have a stretched uptime / downtime ratio means they get greater efficiency in actual use when doing fights with tank swap mechanics that result in downtime where you aren't taking full damage.

With the point about kinetic ward, that's fully adjustable, you can just change this to fit whatever value you feel is appropriate. Pretty much you want the average values that you get in a given fight for both bulwark and KW plugged in there. To be honest I kinda just got the framework functioning and gave to shadows I know for them to decide what those values should be, the numbers are way too variable based on the user and the encounter. The Vanguard abilities are also adjustable, and the given numbers that I had punched were based on math me and Kitru did a long time ago that is probably obsolete by now, so I'm updating it for personal use; users should guestimate their own values though. About the damage distribution / accuracy points, this is also adjustable, so you can just plug in whatever you want to adjust for whatever content you want to. I've got rough values for the hardest current live content plugged into the spreadsheet, which is SnV NiM. You can tank DF / DP without a shield equipped, so i'm not really concerned about it and I don't have good numbers for the NiM version as of yet. But once again, all that is meant to be user adjusted by design. And as for the last points. RW relics are not accounted for at all, they have a pretty dynamic effect on damage intake that isn't effectively modeled by a MM analysis on a spreadsheet. I can integrate this with given DTPS portions of the spreadsheet, and while this seems like it definitely worth doing, it'll take some work. However complex modeling required for this analysis may not be possible on a simple spreadsheet format. I need to look at this. And Finally, the mean mitigation values are pretty much the stats of whoever last asked me to see how their optimization is. That stat budgets in there mean nothing and have no relevance to anything but what a given individual had equipped when asking me a question. For instance the reason the vanguard is very close to your values is because that is my gear, and it's high end, meanwhile I think the stats for the assassin are a healer friend's toon that just got it to 55. Those values must be changed for the individual user. Pretty much the goal of this spreadsheet is to be a fully customization format that allows for complete control and analysis of mean mitigation. This spreadsheet does not automatically find the optimal values for a given stat budget. Doing so without running a simulation requires multi-variable calculus that I'm really not willing to work out (data that is generally easy to access through means such as your posts anyways). Instead it lets you analyze what movement inside a given stat budget will do to your overall mean mitigation. For instance, a pretty significant deviation off of optimal frequently yields only a movement of less than one half of one percent of mean mitigation, making reoptimizing of debatable value. This is also frequently the case with analyzing multiple gearsets for different encounters, which most frequently the differences fall within the margin of error when it comes to damage intake. Something like proper cooldown rotation yields order of magnitudes more improvement than regearing specifically for different encounters / raids, especially given that you will be deducting overall improvement potential from the raid by taking more gear than you would otherwise. The lack of strong differences between gear sets or stat distributions for a given DSA is especially exacerbated by the fact that since 2.0 gear optimization has a much more diminished effect since previous MM values (in the low to mid 80's) are now pretty much unobtainable. We have not been able to reach the point where a quarter of a percent of MM yields fantastic results like we did in the pre 2.0 days; and looking at the stat curves, we may never until the system is redone. All that said, this isn't really a tool for theory-crafting so much as it is a tool for individuals to conduct specific independent analysis of their stat distributions.

I'm having issues with skydrive atm, I think the servers are down for some reason, I'll make a Google docs version of it and amend the original post in a bit.

This is my spreadsheet, it does about as much as I think it possibly can in a spreadsheet if analyzing for mean mitigation values. KBN's numbers yield the same results for the given variables, but this allows for more detailed and on the fly adjustments. Also it allows you to see exactly how much of a difference there is from true optimal and what you are running (it's not worth it to change around all your gear for a 0.02% MM adjustment for instance). You can vary the damage types / accuracy levels, analyze relics for burst effect or their average values on MM, get a chart on damage distribution (that has debatable use, i don't use it but was asked to add it at some point), or simply just analyze for individual shifts in your gear. It'll even cook your breakfast if you print out a copy and set it on fire. Works for all classes if you are fully tank specced (you can manually adjust values to get partial tank specs if that's your thing, it's rare enough that I won't customize the sheet for this however). Any weird feature requests let me know. If it's not a worthless suggestion I may change it. Anyways here: Microsoft Excel Format Enjoy!

This is my spreadsheet, it does about as much as I think it possibly can in a spreadsheet if analyzing for mean mitigation values. KBN's numbers yield the same results for the given variables, but this allows for more detailed and on the fly adjustments. Also it allows you to see exactly how much of a difference there is from true optimal and what you are running (it's not worth it to change around all your gear for a 0.02% MM adjustment for instance). You can vary the damage types / accuracy levels, analyze relics for burst effect or their average values on MM, get a chart on damage distribution (that has debatable use, i don't use it but was asked to add it at some point), or simply just analyze for individual shifts in your gear. It'll even cook your breakfast if you print out a copy and set it on fire. Works for all classes if you are fully tank specced (you can manually adjust values to get partial tank specs if that's your thing, it's rare enough that I won't customize the sheet for this however). Any weird feature requests let me know. If it's not a worthless suggestion I may change it. Anyways here: Microsoft Excel Format Google Drive Google Docs Version (may have errors from conversion process) Enjoy!

We were able to drop the chance of a double full hit to about 6% from 9% by dumping about 1% mean mitigation. The use of this is debatable though, this is the kind of thing people are going to have to try and judge themselves (or have their healers judge for them).

Spreadsheet The primary use for this spreadsheet it to assist the individual in regards to gearing at every stage of the game. Insert your values into the green boxes at the top of the spreadsheet to get a baseline mean mitigation value for your class. From there you can adjust damage types, accuracy levels, relics, and see how various stats adjust your mean mitigation curve. The reasons for doing this versus just taking raw values posted in other threads for optimal values include: 1. The top of the mean mitigation curve is a flat plateau. In general you can be a couple hundred points off of the true optimal values and still be within less than one half of one percent of mean mitigation. This spreadsheet allows you to know when you are optimal enough to stop optimizing. In the stat playground area of the spreadsheet when you punch in 1 for D and A values (and sometime S, for Vanguards), if the difference is less than .0005 between the Aprox. MM changes/stat, you are close enough to stop caring. 2. Optimal values for a given DSA amount cannot be reached in all cases. There are many places where for a given DSA value, it is impossible to reach the calculated optimal value, due to the way that stats are distributed. 3. Damage Types can be adjusted per fight. You can adjust the boss damage types in this spreadsheet to match the content you are gearing for. A damage distribution graph is now included at the bottom, as a result of a discussion with Mysery about the possibility of gearing shadow tanks to decrease the spikiness by smoothing the damage curve while ignoring the overall mean mitigation value. This lead me to getting a graphical representation of the damage distribution using a RNG based basic simulation of combat, which has been added at the very bottom of each classes spreadsheet tab. The jury is still out on how well this works, but it's still useful to see how damage is distributed during a simulated fight. It should be noted that this chart only includes attacks that can be shielded and defended against, and does not include any accuracy adjustments from earlier in the spreadsheet. If you don't have Excel, you can open this spreadsheet on SkyDrive and edit a copy of it for your own personal use. Let me know what else would be useful or could be improved upon. NOTE: The values in the spreadsheet by default for Armor, Defense, Shield, and Absorb are arbitrary values, normally either my stats of the stats of tanks I know. These values are not intended for direct comparison purposes.

The spreadsheet has now been updated to have full functionality for damage type and boss accuracy adjustments! Sorry for the long delay, I got half way done the first night and then life got in the way until recently. Enjoy, please let me know if there are any other features that you want to see or errors that you notice!

Based on popular demand, this is being added in asap. Work on this has begun but is not finished (my wife tells me I must sleep). The added portions to the spreadsheet will be only partially functional or non functional until further notice!

1. Up-times are based off of values given by Kitru, yourself, others, and testing. I can adjust this so that the user can input their own uptimes though, which is not so hard to do. I'll see what I can do to add it in. Right now I'm concerned about getting a correct working base though. 2&3. Can also be be done, but will require more effort. They will probably be added in later, as this is something I've considered adding for a while now. 4. Was already done before my last post. Check the spreadsheet again, the change in value is located under the new MM values in the stat playground section. I may be misunderstanding what you mean in this point however... Also, my primary use of this spreadsheet is to determine stat weighing in as a definite value. For instance, my stats (the current ones on the vanguard page) are not optimal, but getting to optimal only nets a increase of about .04% mean mitigation at a cost of about 660k credits (6 augments changed at 100k per augment and 10k per removal of existing). An increase of 30 armor is a increase of .35% mean mitigation as a comparison of value.

For the armor rating stuff (and pretty much everything else in a green box, these are variable stats that are intended to be matched to the stat sheet by the user to match the displayed value on the character sheet. The values I left in those spots are arbitrary, since they will change once someone punches in their own numbers. Taking the value of armor displayed on the character sheet will match the amount of armor rating being applied toward damage reduction, after all skills are applied. This isn't clearly explained in the sheet for Juggernauts and Assassins, as I was more concerned about matching the DSA formula's to character sheets. I'll be updating this soon for clarity. I'll be re-organizing the stat sheet also to make it more clear where the stats are derived from. Accuracy debuffs are included as a function of the damage calculation, since they occur in a way that is separate but similar to defense chance rolls, I'm using the formula's from dipstik's feedback which includes this as a factor that is mathematically related to but distinct from the defense chance roll; this is also done to account for the accuracy debuff from force sweep / cyclone slash and flame burst / flame sweep for the other two classes. The 4 piece set bonus is included in the total defense values, the 5% not being included in the defense chance threw you off a bit I think. 15% on Kinetic Ward was a dumb mistake, fixing that. I haven't played my Assassin since well before 2.0 came out, it was stuck on a server I no longer play on and I was only recently able to move it; so I'm essentially useless when it comes to Sins at the moment. I haven't gotten the sin up to 55 just yet (as I HATE leveling), so I figured out the skill / buff / stance addends from a friends alt (who has no set bonus gear). There are a lot of aesthetics that are really ugly on this spreadsheet at the moment, namely the stance / buffs / ability things which were jury rigged to work and don't always represent actual sources of the addends. That's the reason that everything, when added, matched up except defense (where you included something that I use as part of the calculation) and shield chance (where I messed up). I'm going to clean it up a lot when I work in the skill menu's up at the top and have it add values based on selections, but I have reorganized it so that it is more clearly understood. Thanks a bunch for the feedback, it's been very useful!

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?page=view&resid=9E1F1DEAAA7C7AFE!395&authkey=!ABDy3qXaWXFs6Vs I just used an version of my PT/VG spreadsheet to create a spreadsheet that covers all 3 tank classes. Juggernaut is functional and should be working, Assassin is a bit of a shot in the dark. Vanguard should be solid at this point. To change between the tanks, click on the tabs located at the bottom of the spreadsheet. This spreadsheet includes time weighted calculations for relic uses and their effect on mean mitigation. I'm think that my calculations for warrior tanks are correct, but I'm sure someone will point out something I'm missing. The biggest concern I have with the current build is how to account for kinetic ward and the effect on stack decrease. I've guesstimated 100% up-time for KW and about 6% mean addition from bulwark, this is probably not accurate. Please poke around and let me know if there is anything I'm missing in there. Thanks Kitru, Dipstik, Metallic, and Fire-breath for poking at my errors in the earlier vanguard version. -Redklaw 7/28 2013 Update: Now includes adjustable damage types / accuracy levels!

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?page=view&resid=9E1F1DEAAA7C7AFE!389&authkey=!AO8-ABtTd9YYs9o Updated the spreadsheet with better formula's to calculate mean mitigation, also pushed up the the total absorb rating bonus from 17% to 20.5%. Thanks everyone for the feedback, it's been much appreciated, keep it coming . I'm finding myself reserving rs/hib and rocket punch when heat blast is close to coming off cooldown, HIB seems to normally grant 2 stacks (possibly due to proximity procs from the autocleave?, I need to look at my fights / logs closer) and rocket punch grants one stack automatically. I personally have very little downtime between 3 stacks heat screen and the heat blast effect. This may be something I'm overestimating on how often actually happens for the third stack to fill; since I'm only really noticing it when I pay attention to that portion of my rotation, and I'm biased to be unaware of when I'm not paying attention to my rotation. The cooldown reductions on HB/EB are something I'm just not paying attention to at all however. The usage of relics for burst mitigation is one of the primary reasons I originally built this sheet, since the effect of boosting is magnified when in a fight due to reduced time on agro (tank swaps, rest mechanics, etc). Pretty much with most raid mechanics you can treat almost all damage as spike damage, since you rarely don't have some type of cool-down running. I also want to add the effect of adrenals for this reason in addition to the effect they have on stat balancing. Eventually I want to migrate this spreadsheet to a MSVC program, which will make modeling more complex damage mechanics easier. I really haven't had time lately to start porting things over, but soon... Btw just noticed that was you Metallic ! Feel free to hop in our mumble or whisper me if you catch errors or anything else that you think needs to be added / changed.

The original guesstimation was 13% from the two skills added to the 4% from ablative. I'm not sure if I should up that to 17% for a total of 21% or about 18-20% or so. I agree with the previous poster that more testing is required. I'd rather go with average optimal values here, since if you're bothering to do the math, you probably are pretty good with your rotation. You've convinced me; I will be updating the spreadsheet to include these factors. Thanks for the extra work . Where do you're assumptions come from btw, extrapolated from parses?

I'm not seeing how accounting for accuracy or resist chance would modify the results. These values are fixed in combat and they don't have a diminishing effect any of the variable tank stats (D/S/A). Think of the mean mitigation calculation as a calculation that factors against only hits that actually go through defensive rolls, since calculating for other potential damage has no overall effect on stat balancing. Pretty much armor rating versus non defensible attacks, and base chance for the boss to miss / resist are not part of the pool being analyzed; rather this is a calculation of mitigation against the pool that stat balancing would effect. (TL;DR: I'm lazy and I don't feel like adding the additional math when I don't feel like it will in any way effect the end results.) Also there is a small fix I need to put in regarding up-times for the click relics, I didn't realize that the S/A click and the Defense click had different up-time values. One of the two is currently netting much more overall mean mitigation value than it should; however, neither of those are currently competitive against the old static war hero pvp relics. Changing the +32 power to +32 defense would make them competitive, I hope that's a bug that will be fixed soon.

Okay, I'll be honest here, 17% was a total guesstimation, surprised I was as close as I am. It was one of the things I was going to test out and verify that was left to be worked on. I mean I literally pulled that number out of the air.

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?page=view&resid=9E1F1DEAAA7C7AFE!389&authkey=!AO8-ABtTd9YYs9o UPDATE 7/8/2013: Fixed mitigation formula and adjusted absorb gain from skills. Bug with time duration on defense clicky relic is fixed as well. Thanks Kitru, Dipstik, Metallic, and Fire-breath for poking at my errors. Just updated my PT/VG spreadsheet for 2.0, it now includes a comprehensive relic section that allows you to optimize your stats for maximum mean mitigation while accounting for the effects of relics. The effects of relics are calculated based on non-concurrent up-times in this this spreadsheet, which is the ideal situation. This also calculate relic effects based on an infinite duration fight; you will notice a greater mean mitigation increase via relics based on lower engagement time or tank swaps due to increased relic up-times. The stat optimization section also includes a section based on relic usage, as the optimal values will be slightly different based on what relics you are using. For example using a Relic of Fortunate Redoubt slightly devalues defense rating's overall increase to mean mitigation. This is still a work in progress, if there is any interest in having this spreadsheet built for other classes let me know! -Redklaw

Err... what? New Gear Tiers for PVP in 2.0: Partisan (162) Conqueror (168) Firebrand (Rated 168 Conqueror)

The Vanguard Elite War Hero Combat Tech set currently requires War Hero Combat medic gear to get... Fix please!

I'm using passive pvp relics in all fights with except ones where two tanks transfer a single boss (both versions of Kephess and TFB actual). I'm working on a calculator that calculates mean mitigation factoring in uptimes for cool downs and relics, the formula for relics is very much in favor of the PVP relics in fights with high tank uptimes. I'm using one shield and one defense pvp relic usually. The math for relics is a bit complicated and an eyesore, it can be found in one my my spreadsheets posted earlier however. The built in tech tank accuracy debuff is a very good point that I'm going to adjust my spreadsheets and the program I'm writing to account for. Should be mathematically equivalent to adding the debuff to the total defense percentage. Edit: the relic formula I am using is weighted for uptime, I agree 455 absorb on a 6 of 20 proc relic does not equate to 455 * 3 / 10 added to your absorb. Rather it is (MMactive * duration / cycletime) + (MMpassive * (1- duration / cycletime)). This can be extrapolated out to include multiple relics and cooldowns. You can see where the formula gets huge with multiple cd's and the fact that MM numbers are a really long formula themselves.